April is National Poetry Month!
The English, Foreign Languages and English as a Second Language Department is celebrating National Poetry Month with its annual Campus Poetry Project.*
Let’s continue the celebration of poetry with the following:
Spring
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
https://poets.org/poem/spring-0
This poem is in the public domain.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892. A poet and playwright, her poetry collections include The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver (Flying Cloud Press, 1922), winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Renascence and Other Poems (Harper, 1917) She died on October 18, 1950, in Austerlitz, New York.
*To view the Campus Poetry Project in Blackboard, click the “Community” tab, use “Organization Search” (bottom left corner) to find “Campus Poetry Project” and enroll.
Jennifer Austin
Assistant Professor of English
Published: Wed, 20 Apr 2022 12:10:30 +0000 by j.austin